Ron Conners: What Rons May Come
by Mulletmanalive
Summary: AU: Kim is dead. No, she isn't, but noone knows where the hell she is. She isn't in heaven or hell and hasn't been reincarnated. Can Ron and Wade, with the help of the mysterious narrator, find out before things come to a head?
1. Introduction

I do not own the characters or situations within this story that directly tie to Disney's Kim Possible products including televisual presentations, movies or comic books.

I draw no profit from their use and use them under the tribute/parody sections of Copyright law.

* * *

The characters of Immortal, Arahat, Dreamer, Saint, Prophet, Watcher, Pagan, Shaman and the Spirit Britannic, along with the Lost Paragon are characters from my Living Saint stories and I hold ownership of such.

The character of the Narrator and Carrious, along with Nameless are independent characters that belong to me also. In case you're wondering, they represent my Dreaming self, my conscience and my Jungian Shadow.

* * *

This is a story that may take those who read Ron Conners: Life on the Edge; a little time to get their heads around because its contents makes the non-linear style of that story look as clear as day in retrospect.

Technically, there are three narratives within this, each told in first person from different understandings of what is going on.

The first is that of Wade. He entered the Dreamtime initially through an accident and his story ties directly into the events of Life on the Edge. He has no grasp of the objective nature of the Dreamtime and so his story flows in a way that makes sense but the other character's action will usually not gel with his understanding of events.

The second is that of Ron and his journeys, occasionally accompanied by Dreamer or Arahat. He can divorce himself from the linear nature of time and move between various points in his own personal timeline. His events are in a garbled order but his order of events is logical.

The final view is that of Kim herself, though what herself is anymore or ever was, is a point of conjecture. Unlike the others, she does not tell her story, rather having it told by a character called the Narrator. He is completely divorced from the waking world so his understanding of reality is much different from the others. In some ways, her portions of the story must be taken on faith.

* * *

It is not practical or helpful to try listing what order the chapters function because they occur in a linear progression from the point of view of the protagonist but occur at different points of time to those otherwise. The chapters are labelled with the name of their narrator so at least that can remain clear.

Before you wonder, the order in which they occur is indeed significant but no, I'm not planning to explain this until the epilogue…

* * *

Anyone who leaves a review is free to make suggestions about where this should go. With the exception of the core plot, i'm all ears but if your suggestion doesn't fit either the plot or what the Dreamtime is all about, don't be offended if you get a reply telling you that something is impractical. I'll be polite. 


	2. Prologue  Wade

"She's alive?" Ron asks, sitting back, looking like he's just been punched in the stomach. He's even gone kind of limp, arms hanging and a troubled expression.

"Yeah, I've been trying to work out how to tell you for a long time."

"But she's alive…how is that possible?"

"Well, it's kind of a long story."

"Wade, it's not like I have anywhere else to be."

"Well, you know that you asked the Narrator to search for Kim's soul at some point. He set out to do that but it was while he was helping me escape from Destiny's dreams that we encountered her. To say that she was surprised to find out that she was dead was an understatement. The thing that shook us the most was that she up and woke up on us. Vanished, just like that."

I add emphasis by clicking my fingers.

"Where has she been if she's alive? There's no mention of her in the book of the Dead and there's no paperwork anywhere in the Celestial Bureaucracy to show where she was reincarnated."

"She didn't die Ron, because that wasn't her that hit the ground. We found a little evidence but I think that you'll have to confront her yourself."

"Confront her myself?"

"The Narrator's been making a point of drawing her back into his place each time she dreams. You'll find her there."

* * *

Author's Note: Yes, short chapter but it's just a rehash of something that happened in Life Begins. Next instalment may take a few days. 


	3. Wade

"Where am I?" I asked myself, speaking out loud and wondering about the way that the sound reflected around the cavernous space. Looking around, this was not what I had expected the inside of Destiny to look like. When Ron asked my to attempt a code-cross into the programming systems of the Destiny super computer, I had envisioned something like the movie Tron, or possibly the Matrix, not this.

I'm stood, basically alone in an Esher painting. There are stairways at odd angles all around me and the geometry is non-Euclidian so that things sprout out of no-where and things seem to vanish as I take a few steps to get a better look at it.

"What exactly did you expect the dreams of a computer to look like, Mr Lodden?" asks a voice from behind me. In some ways it's like Ron's but deep and slightly gravely. I wheel around and there's a man stood there in a neat grey suit with lighter grey pinstripes. He seems infinitely familiar to me and I can't place why.

"Who are you?" I ask lamely.

"I am a guide to places like this. I can't help but find those who need me, it is my curse. You can call me the Narrator if you like; you may address me however you like."

I do a slight double take because something doesn't make sense.

"Did you just say Narrator with an 'N'?"

"Yes. I'm used to this place so I can express myself to the limits of the Dreamtime's powers of context. Reality here is based on metaphor and observation."

"You said something about dreams. What do you mean? Dreams are abstract representations of neurons firing in a test sequence while you sleep."

"Mr Lodden, I seriously doubt that that is the case. If it were, why would the Revelation to John have made such a big impression?"

I take a few steps up one of the impossible staircases and turn to look down at him. He's stood at right angles to me protruding from one of the walls, looking calm as can be.

"How are you not bothered by this?" I ask, looking straight at him.

"Wade, if this bothered me, how would I deal with the dreams of real people?"

"You keep saying that…where am I?"

"Has Ron ever explained the concept of the Dreamtime to you?"

"No."

"Well, it looks like you've stumbled onto something that he hadn't foreseen. You've been asking me questions about this all the way along and he still doesn't know why you're sulking."

"What the hell are you on about?" I ask, looking back from scanning the room. He's stood right next to me and for a second, I'd have believed that this was Ron. The narrow to broad shifts in his Polish features are unmistakable and he has the same lopsided facial expression, though he isn't grinning.

A pair of slate blue eyes regard me from behind his solid cheeks and seem all the brighter because of the mane of dirty blonde-brown hair that he has tied back behind his head and the reddish tinged beard that covers the lower half of his face.

"The Dreamtime is an extratemporal realm that exists coterminous with every moment of human existence. If forms the basis of the Australian native religion and ties closely enough in with the thinking and beliefs of basically every religion that it shares the same space as their conceptions of heaven and hell. I dwell here so my concept of time is entirely subjective to my consciousness, which is completely divorced from the real world.

"I've met you in your dreams when you were younger and older and I've given you guidance before, though you've ignored me or acted as you would. Few people believe that dreams are prophecy. Now you're here, in the dreams of destiny and you have no idea what to do about it."

"Destiny is a computer. It can't dream, can it?"

"As we're here, I suspect that that question has already been answered, don't you?"

"But how?"

"You figure it out some time from now. It's to do with the Asimov principal of program evolution. Random functions of lost code from deleted files came together to produce commands that were unexpected. Ghosts in the machine. These eventually came to the point where Destiny began to allow them to link together and evolve. You've encountered one of its program deviations before; do you remember it?"

"The time when Kim still came to confront Tara, despite her not having had anything to do with Ron?"

"Yes."

"Why the hell would a computer dream like an Esher painting?"

"If you couldn't calculate the possibility of things that cannot exist, if you had no imagination, where would your first baby steps of self discovery be?"

"I'm in its first dreams?"

"Like those of a baby, they make no sense to the more developed. It doesn't even have a dream-self yet but its programming on the matter was powerful enough to infiltrate and corrupt your hacking routines."

"I'm actually here?"

"You aren't asleep, Wade. You're just inside the computer's dreams. I don't know how you'll get out though. I guess we can learn together."

"I can't get out?"

"Dreamers wake up when their body is ready, I guide comas back to their own self reality so they can wake up, projectors simply follow their silver cord back but you, well, you've entered by a means I'd never even considered. You've piggybacked on someone else's dreams without actually having to project first. Most odd."

"So the computer's asleep?"

"I don't know. I don't think computers can go unconscious and they don't have mental partitions so I'd assume we were wandering around in part of its memory systems that aren't in use at the moment."

"You're not bad with computers, dude," I say to his obvious amusement.

"I've had some good teachers," he replies enigmatically giving me a look that makes me feel like I'm one of them.

* * *

I'm confused. This place seems to have no logic to it at all. I thought even dreams had a certain logic to them, but there are things that are really confusing me about this place; there is a door I can't even reach.

Each time I walk towards it, it seems to get further away, though the amount it gets further away is smaller each time. That said, I'm not getting any closer.

After a short while, I give up and sit down, clutching me head and wishing that the madness would stop.

"What's the problem, Wade?" my guide asks, standing next to me. He's not been much of a guide so far; he's told me nothing that I can use to find my way out of here, maintaining that he's just as blind here as I am.

"The door keeps getting further away. I thought in dreams that the thing was supposed to recede into the distance, not just get tiny amounts further away?"

"You're thinking about this all wrong. Imagine that you were a computer and you were presented with a function that you can't decipher because it is incorrect according to your classical math but fits your calculus perfectly. It disrupts your perfectly balanced world and thus it plagues you. We're inside something like that. People are plagued by what they can't control and Destiny is plagued by this, hence why it's the way you know instinctively that you must go."

I pause for a second, trying to make sense of what he's saying. The situation here is familiar. I can't, wait, no…oh, that.

"We're in Zeno's paradox? I'm being stopped from getting out of here because the computer has encountered and been unable to solve Zeno's paradox?"

"Looks like it."

"This is insane," I declare, looking up at the ceiling. Well, except that it seems to actually be a floor.

"Y'know, Ron used to have a fit whenever he encountered something too strange in here but he gave up on that after a while. The key to this place is how you look at things, really."

"What do you mean?" I ask, getting up a little and turning to face him.

"Well, the door there is being incompliant because the computer's subconscious is unwilling to reveal to you what's behind there. It must be something important. That's what dreams are about. Now, all you have to do is find a way to convince something that doesn't have emotions in a conventional sense to allow you to see its deepest darkest secrets."

"You make this sound so easy."

"It isn't at first, but you get used to it. Or you go mad; One of the two."

"Why can't any of your guys with super powers speak in normal terms?"

"Because what we have to say can't be expressed in more normal terms. Why is it that people who don't understand something always assume that there is a simpler way of saying what they're hearing?"

"There usually is."

"No, there's usually a way of saying something that's comparable and maybe has some of the flavour of what needs to be said but really doesn't say what the original does. That's the problem; people assume that things are actually simple.

"For instance, assume you were explaining to me about aircraft. To me, there's no real difference between a wing and an aerofoil but there is a great deal of difference to you. Likewise, I may not know the finesse difference between the tail proper and the stabilizers but that would lead to a really major problem if you said the former while meaning the latter, right?"

"I guess so," I reply carefully after a moment. I'm not entirely sure how much he knows about the subject and can't tell how much of the terminology he just mangled was mangled on purpose.

"You're trying to work out how much of that I mangled on purpose. Good luck," he grins at me and happily wanders up the corridor and through the door.

I curse and try to follow him but I can't, the corridor keeps getting a little longer each time I try.

"You're going to have to think about this differently, Lodden!" he yells at me, leaning on the doorpost. He's less than twelve feet away but that may as well be a light year.

I keep cursing as I try and ford forward.


	4. Narrator

_Love is not petty, Love is not cruel, Love is refusing her your last grain so that you will have the strength to carry her. Love is quiet, yet it echoes through the heavens. It is not a hollow suggestion that you can feel love in the air and taste it in the water._

Ron Stoppable.

* * *

The words carve themselves into the mud, as if God himself were reaching down and writing words in the dirt. Each time she hauls herself up from the mire to look at the progress of the words, they were growing in a different place and collapsing in another.

It's almost pretty, the way that the words seemed to flow and grow and fail and die in front of her; keeping going so that she can read it by staring at the area for a few moments. It seems strange to her to think of words as dying, but in the last few…what were they? Days? Weeks? Months?

It was true that she had been growing more and more morbid as her last chance at true love was ripped away from her but to lose track of how long it was.

That was a better question really, where was she?

The lower half of her body is completely consumed by the warm, cloying mud by this point, leaving only the upper torso free to move. She's front down and there's a very heavy weight of mud attached to her chest. Looking down, there's a moment of smug pleasure passing through her mind about the fact that Bonnie would have been in real trouble with her larger breasts.

Futilely, in a gesture of auburn haired defiance, she begins to attempt to crawl free. I smile and nod silently at the fact that she's remembered the basics of survival. It looks like relying on him for so long hasn't completely retarded her abilities.

* * *

"Hello Kim," says a deep, chesty voice with a fine hint of a catch to it. The accent is one she can't place, but it sounds English.

She hauls her head around to look up at me. I can only guess what she sees because I'm not really thinking about it. No wait, I've been doing this for so long I can tell you. I look like a version of her childhood friend with a red-stained beard and two slate grey eyes wrapped in something akin to a parka made of miscellaneous animal skins. That's how I usually look in this part of the Dreamtime anyway.

"Who are you?" she asks weakly in an 'I'm trapped in quicksand, why aren't you helping me?' kind of way.

"I'll answer the second question first; I've not helping you because you haven't asked me to. I doubt you will either. As to who I am, here, I am known as the Narrator."

"What do you mean, here?"

"We're not in Kansas any more, Dorothy," I reply happily, knowing what will happen.

* * *

I'm sat at a rustic, American dream, Waltons style table in a back country farmhouse. In front of me in a blue and white ringed coffee mug is some of the most acrid swill I've ever encountered. I don't like coffee and this is a plethora of all the things I don't like about it.

On the other side of the table, looking adorable in her anger at the situation, is a pretty girl a little shorter than me with fiery hair in two plats and a blue dress that was picked out by an idiot because it clashes unmercifully with her eyes, which are pretty much glowing with the emotion she has raging in her mind.

"What the ---- just happened?" she demands before looking confused, "What the ----? Why can't I say ----?"

"Your mind is still trying to process the situation and I implanted an idea into your head. We're in the Wizard of Oz and you're Dorothy. Movies of that era had no swearing in them so this has no swearing in it."

She seems upset by my cheerful smile. I know it's hard to pull off jovial and friendly in a heavy beard but I was under the impression I did it rather well. Oh well, this is her universe I suppose.

"What do you mean, we're in the Wizard of Oz?"

"It was the first instantly recognisable thing that your brain could find to use as a testing ground to try in let you get to grips with the world here. Hence, we are in the Wizard of Oz and you are Dorothy. We're now going to travel the lands of Oz, or at least what you know of them, until either you figure out whatever it is that's making your dreams like this or I manage to explain enough of the situation that we can find a resolution. Any questions or would you rather just find out who your subconscious chose as the Witch of the East?"

"But we haven't gone through the tornado bit yet. We haven't landed on her yet."

"I suspect that your mind has come up with something much more unpleasant and fitting for whoever you're forcing into the role," I reply flatly, wondering when she's going to get that the characters here are built from aspects of her mind and the versions of other people that she holds in her mind.

That said, I'm treating this like a coma rescue…what the hell do I do with her once she surfaces? She has no body for me to guide her back to.

* * *

Eventually, something kicks in. Jeez, it took long enough.

Last time I was involved in anything like this, the target was in a drug induced coma from a botched suicide and then they were actively in hell.

Will she just get on with it?

I'm not even reading any indecision here, I just think that there's something stopping her thinking about anything other than the 'mom's apply pie' room we're sat in.

"Listen, Kim, this is you're metaphor. If you want to do this some other way than the Wizard, I'm sure I can oblige."

"What are you talking about?"

"Isn't that much at least obvious? We're in what amounts to your dreams. Or more accurately, we're in your denial because you're not in any state to actually be dreaming."

"My denial? You're going to explain that right now."

"No, I'm not, actually. If I do, you won't believe me or things will go horribly wrong, horribly quickly. I'll tell you what. I'll meet you later in the plot."

"Wait, what?" she asks mid double take as I vanish without ceremony or sign.

* * *

Kim sits down heavily on the chair that I had just vacated and curses in a subdued way, given that such things won't pass her lips. She's confused and angry and going through one of those cycles of rage and disappointment that happen when you know someone could easily explain something to you but seem intent on treating you like an idiot until you get the answer yourself.

Giving in, she lets her head drop to the table.

The angle didn't feel right. Something about the angles in the room and…her brain finally caught up with the fact that she's moving. There it is.

Looking up in a confused panic, she glances out of the window. Swirls of wind, carrying all kinds of detritus spin past and she stands to watch, mesmerised.

After a few seconds, Drakken, Duff Killigan and Monkey Fist row past haphazardly in a large wooden bathtub. Killigan has a white shirt spattered with blood, Drakken a white shirt with smudges and Fist a pair of what look like shiny nunchuks with a string between them.

They row on past and next is Ron, swimming happily in his retarded breaststroke across the sky. She stands confused for a moment as he pulls a knife from a shin holster and plunges forward towards a huge shark, stabbing it through the eye and holding on as it's death throes carry him out of sight.

Next is Shego on a bicycle, grinning and cackling with a pointy hat and a greenish halo.

Kim sat down on to the chair, hard, thinking to herself, "This is so dumb."

She was rattled from her reverie, such as it was, but a bone jarring smashing force from below, though oddly, she remained in her seat and didn't break anything.

"What was that?" she asked no-one in particular.

"Uh dunno," came her mumbled, toothy reply and she looked down to the floor to find a grinning cylinder of pink looking up at her.

"Rufus?" she asked slowly.

"NuUh," it replied, holding up a collar tag around its neck. The inscription read Tonto and it looked like it had been made from a World War two dogtag.

"You're Tonto, huh?"

The cylinder just nodded in its way.

* * *

Setting foot outside the door, Kim is baffled by what she saw. Rather than the Munchkin land, candy house set up that she was expecting; ancient Japanese architecture looms out at her from every direction. She composes herself quickly and scurries out of the house to look beneath the porch.

Sure enough, there was someone under there; rather than the traditional pair of white and red stockings that graced the original version of the scene, instead was a young woman in a Kimono, Japanese and defiant in her situation; one leg crushed horribly under the house porch.

"Oh my God, Yori, I'm so sorry! Let me help you," she declares, hurrying towards the prone woman.

"Get away from me, Gaijin!" Yori snaps as Kim steps within a few metres of her. Kim recoils in shock. "If I am to commit seppuku, I shall have a second with honour, not the denials and falsehoods of a child!"

Yori makes a sharp, cutting gesture and dozens of tiny shapes, each clad in ninja pyjamas flew into view, striking out at her. Desperately she parries blow after blow as their little knives cut and thrust and she's driven back across the giant circular square. In her mind she registers that there should be a giant pink and gold swirl showing the beginning of this branch of the yellow brick road but instead there was a massive Yin-yang symbol carved across it in red and blue.

Kim registers movement as she fought desperately with the monkey ninjas, having a harder time of fighting them than she had ever seen Ron have with the same foes. That shook her. Ron was an appalling fighter so these ninja were far more powerful than she remembered them from life. Beside Yori was a well built, if short ninja who took his place beside her. Yori's blade slits her belly and as she collapsed forward, an expertly wielded blade flies through her neck, leaving only a sliver of flesh to hold the head in place.

Kim is very nearly sick. The hooded figure turns to look at her for a moment and a pair of dark brown eyes stare back at her, emotionless cold clawing at the edges of what she felt being sent at her.

In that instant, she looks away, unable to hold his eye. When she returns, he is gone.

* * *

Author's Notes: I originally tried this chapter as i conceived it, with the Narrator talking like no sane human should but instead, i made it so that everything is at once present tense to him. This may become troublesome later in the story, but more for the characters that you, hopefully. 


	5. Ron

Soulmates.

Every culture has something similar in its Lexicon. Wherever I go, I hear the word through my mystical God translation, the word used meaningfully and flippantly the whole world over.

Stood here, on the edge of the fields of Sorrow, ready for the long journey to the lake of Tears, I dread to think what reality actually has in store for those who try to seek out their fallen love.

Something inside me thinks this is a bad idea.

It must be because I actually asked permission to go after Kim. I've never done anything of the sort before. If she were ever in trouble, I'd throw away saving the world in order to mount an ill conceived rescue, but now, when I could find her and bring her back so that Saint could try to resurrect her, I take the time to ask permission to go plunging into the netherworld.

What is wrong with me? I ask myself as the grim vista spreads out before me.

* * *

"There is a concept in Buddhism, but it's a lot more difficult to explain than if I were a representative of someone who actually believed in immortal souls or the like," Arahat explained slowly, picking his words carefully.

"What do you mean?" I ask, impatient to know how I go about finding that person.

"Ron, the only time I can think of where two beings are in some way fated to meet again and again is when two beings swear onto the benevolent path together and swear that neither will reach nirvana without the other. That isn't likely to be you, Ron."

"Why do you say that? You trained me."

"Yes, but I trained you as a Siddhe wielding soldier of righteousness, not as an aspirant Buddha. That would be outside my mandate."

"So, what would Kim and I have done in past lives to be bound like that."

"Well, that's the thing. It wasn't you and Kim per se. Instead, it was the beings that eventually became Kim and Ron that made this choice. Despite having echoes of their Karma, you are not the same beings by any stretch of the imagination. You may not even be the same shape."

"So you're saying that we're tied together by fate?"

"Fate is not a word to be spoken of here, Ron. You're tied by volition, temperament and history. You meet again because it's fundamental to your natures to want to. This is all hypothetical anyway. Look, she wasn't reincarnated to there's no point in discussing what I'd need to meet her to determine."

* * *

"What about Daoism?" I ask, walking after master Immortal as he moves at great speed through a complex four dimensional version of Tai Chi.

"What about it?" he asks, adopting a posture that the normal human body cannot because it literally has one foot in the past.

"What do they believe about Soul-mates?"

"Nothing specific, really. There are Chinese traditions and drawing the line between Daoism stuff and core Chinese stuff is hard enough. There is the old man of the Moon though. He's a common ground legend from the region as a whole. Once a month, when the moon is full, he comes down to earth to take time and tie people who are destined to be married together with a red string. It's kind of like what you're hoping I'll tell you about but there is a fairly strong theme of destiny in Chinese thought. I'm sorry, I'm not planning on indulging this further," he finished frankly.

"Thank you master," I said, watching as he executed a very slow shift in temporal glide as he shifted his weight.

* * *

"Ron, to my knowledge, my people never really made any link like that because Fate implies time being linear and we just don't think that way."

"But master Dreamer, there must be something about destiny in your beliefs," I replies, asking, clawing for some hope.

"Ron, I can't give you hope if there is nothing for me to kindle inside you. It would be like trying to set fire to stones. What I can do is promise that I'll take you wherever you need to go in the dreamtime to try and find your answers. Is that ok?"

"I guess I'll have to settle for that."

"That a boy!"

* * *

Grey ash clings to my beard and all around my face, sticking to my eyelashes like a dark shadow and making my world seem just that little bit grimmer.

The beard wasn't actually my choice in the matter. I think that repeated exposure to Immortal, Dreamer and the Narrator has contaminated my self image slightly in that as I get better at acting in the heavenly and dream realms, I grow a heavier and ever increasingly awesome beard that I swear protects me from some of the unpleasantness that occurs at times in such places.

Except now. Right now, I'm wishing that I didn't have a beard. I wish that there wasn't all this ash too, but in the desert of fear there isn't much that can be done about such things.

To find the dead, one must follow their footprints and it seemed logical that the most efficient way of finding someone who died of falling a great distance would be to climb the vertigo cliffs and find the correct footprints. From there, I have a trail.

Unfortunately, metaphor being what it is, I'm finding it more than a little hard going. To my left, I can see the frozen corpse of some poor soul; I look harder and see the last moments before it slipped from this world, long hair choked with ash and tears tearing through the grime. Down to one knee, then the other, then hope was extinguished and the head and shoulders came down until the bitter wind froze the life from it, leaving a hunched rock in its wake.

Poor girl probably woke up in a puddle of something.

I can't imagine fear like that.

I pray I never have to.

I used to think that my greatest fear was losing Kim, but in reality, that wasn't worth being afraid of in the same way as the way other people treated me after her death.

James Possible's madness, or at least misdirected anger, non-withstanding, I got off pretty poorly. Drakken's legion of Kim-alike stalkers and a whole new flavour of synthodrone in the form of that bastard Eric was bad enough but the fact that Anne was driven over the edge and then Monique was one of the first chipped.

People wonder why I fled the world I knew. It isn't that hard to work out when you know the actual facts.

Thinking about it, I can do most of my more basic powers here. I'll sit down and wait out part of the storm inside the best shield I can hold together for the time being.

* * *

I really should have bought the guidebook. It turns out that the storms here don't end. The bitter winds are still cutting my cheeks and I now have no idea how much time has passed in the real world.

I'm tempted to drop out but I'm already far too far into the realms of fear to just project back to where I leave from. That may work when I'm in my personal timeline but I've never found anywhere sufficient to drive me into this realm in my timeline.

That said, only phobias, fears and cold dreads can bring one here and though I'm prone to overreact to all sorts of things, or was when I wasn't more than capable of defeating anything that life throws at me, I've never been completely unable to cope because of fear. Monkeys make me sweat and gibber, not freeze in fear, before you say it.

As I trudge, I pass a bitter spectre, a man whose fear of fire has brought him to this section of the desert and now the bitter ash-filled winds are slowly but surely stripping the flesh from his bones. His doleful wail cuts the air like a bad aria and he finally collapses. What sort of emotional state you'd need to be in to have a dream that bad, I dread to think.

Presently, the vista becomes clear as I step out of the storms, looking back to see a nigh vertical wall holding back and raging furiously. From here, it's almost comical but inside it was rather like Dante's version of hell. Apparently, that's had more of an affect on the shape of the Christian hell than any other text in history.

* * *

"Who are you?" a huge voice rumbles from behind me, shaking my diaphragm.

I wheel around and there is a giant stood there. I can't work out his true height. From one moment he seems to be night on a thousand feet tall and formed of shadow and at others a mere nine feet but more real than a being has any right to be. All of his edges seem to be like razors and the actually sharp limits of his armour are almost sanity defying.

Nearly as broad as he is tall, he looms down over me with a look of pure rage in his eyes.

"You!" it cries in a tone that implies recognition, "I warned you that I would crush you if you returned and this time no amount of cunning or grace is going to save you!"

"Sorry?" I manage as I throw myself out of the way of a sword that seems larger than could actually support its own weight. The blade recoils with a speed I would never credit an object of that size with and descends again in the blinking of an eye.

"Don't play dumb with me, human!" the voice cries out, shaking my bones.

"Playing? At the moment, I'm pure one hundred percent wholesome, family friendly out of the loop," I manage, leaping a beautifully executed horizontal strike in the same instant.

"You can't escape me forever, Tomir!"

The name seems familiar and I can't place it. I begin wracking my brain for anything that might be relevant and then it hits me. Not the information, the blade.

I'm driven into the sand with the force of a tornado. You know the ones where you hear that an egg gets driven through concrete unbroken or the like. There's a part of me screaming to get up but I can't get my arms free. I struggle and pull and push but still his blade rises to finish the job.

One hand free.

That's all it took.

The blade smashes down into that hand and comes to a halt. The finest trickle of blood oozes out from beneath the blade and I look at my palm. Practically undamaged.

He tries to drag the blade free, straight up.

I'm pulled from the earth like an onion and drop onto my feet. The blade begins to arc down again.

It stops as if it's hit an impenetrable. In a way it has. I just realised, my power here is directly related to my self belief and frankly, I know that I'm powerful. Thus, here, I know that I'm formidable beyond reckoning and frankly, I'm pretty much above this.

"Who the hell are you?" I demand, throwing the sword back. I'm not sure if I can win this fight because I was specifically cautioned against trying to multiply in the Dreamtime but I'll give him a damn solid fight.

"I," it rumbles, "am Abaddon. Angel of the Lord and repentant sinner, guardian of the gates of hell. You, are Tomir, a perfection, a mockery of His plansfor your mortal creator."

"I am no perfection. I'm a REAL BOY!" I reply, a sick smile of madness passing over my face.

"What do you want here, Mortal?"

"I seek one who died of fear of falling!"

"Then you have come to the right place," he replied as our metaphysical duel began.

* * *

Author's Note: Appologies for a slow update. Just haven't been able to get into the swing of this story, especially while it's sister is so much easier to write. I'm having an odd time, recently came off my meds and probably shouldn't have in my third year. I'm going to go to the docs to try and do something about my lack of focus.

Any suggestions, feel free.


	6. Wade II

There is something profoundly beautiful in chaos and another completely different beauty that can be found within order of the highest kind. As a computer programmer, I think in terms of the latter and the computer, Destiny is bound within those thoughts but it seems she yearns for something more.

Something different.

Something beautiful.

The Escher painting that was reality is gone for now, replaced by something that is on the whole more disturbing by far. Salvador Dali would have had a field day with the mixed metaphors that this place is kicking up, with gigantic elephants flowing into cliffs and splitting into massive waterfalls.

I step up next to one of the pools and gather myself a handful of water to slake my thirst for a moment. After a quick sip, I make the mistake of looking into my hand. Two slate grey eyes are staring back at me.

I start and drop the water back into the pool where it ripples and distorts the surface. After a few moments, the reflection reconstructs itself and there is a beard smiling back at me, worn by a man with eyes like Ron, full of laughter and hurt.

"What the hell are you doing in my reflection?!" I demand, feeling somehow violated.

He smiles just a little harder and stands up.

His right hand, left as I see it whips up to beside his head and points a finger to the sky. It completes a slow revolution, cuts across to his mouth as if he were trying to silence me and thrusts forward as if to my chest, finger still upright. He hands both gesture to his face, fingers spread and top towards me and then sweep downwards, indicating his full face. Then a fist is clenched over his solar plexus, knuckles outwards and then thrust out towards me as to show me the heel of his hand, eyebrows raising as he does so.

He looks on for a few moments then begins to laugh silently and then vanishes, leaving my puzzled expression looking back at me.

"What was that all about?" I wonder to myself and turn around. I must have been thinking out loud because the next moment I hear a pretty voice asking a question.

"What was what about?"

I start and turn, expecting to see…well something other than what I find anyway.

Stood before me is a girl I could have mistaken for the Monique or five years ago. Long silken black hair cascades down her shoulders into waves and gentle curls around her slender but shapely figure. My breath is taken away for that instant and not knowing what to make of meeting another person here, I turn and call out.

"Dude, where are you? Who is she?"

I turn back but she's gone and a gentle breeze stirs the air here for the first time since I crossed the threshold.

"Who's who?" he asks, suddenly behind me, materialising in the place that I was just looking for him.

"The girl, a beautiful girl like no other I've ever seen before. She was just here…"

"Oh," he says, drawing a breath, "that was just a Nymph. They're all over the dreamtime but this isn't part of your memory so I don't know what sort of thoughts are shaping it."

"Could you be any less helpful?"

"Probably…I could tell you things that aren't true or that won't make sense later once you've met the thing."

"That's still not helpful," I growl back at him.

"Its as much information as I can give you that will make sense without me having to give you a long and abstract lecture, which I doubt our readers would appreciate," he replies calmly then looks off into the distance as if he were breaking the fourth wall.

"What are you doing?" I ask after a moment.

"I'm not sure if that were for your benefit or for anyone who may end up watching."

"What? You think this is going to be made into a TV show once I get out?" I ask, almost laughing.

"You never know," he replies mysteriously, looking off in the same direction again.

"You're crazy."

"And you're seeing nymphs, which makes me wonder where it came from."

With that he wanders off, stepping firmly on the surface of the water as if it were glass. He still hasn't made any mention of the fact that he was in the puddle minutes before. I shake my head and try to follow him.

I make it four steps before I suddenly fall through the surface, as if I had walked on thin ice and run out of luck.

* * *

Desperately failing, I realise after turning once, then twice, then a third time that there isn't actually a surface to the water. 

I'm trapped in what seems to be an infinite sphere with equal lighting throughout.

Time ticks by, tick follows tock follows tick follows tock and still I can't think what to do.

Eventually, after what seems like the shortest time and the entirety of my life at once, I begin to panic.

I flail and I push and I kick and there's nothing happening. The whole world is just equally blue water and I'm drowning in its infinite blue wateriness.

A strong but narrow hand grabs my arm. I look around, expecting the Narrator; he has curiously small hands for a man but that isn't what I find.

Brown.

Almost black.

Seemingly bottomless.

Warm.

Those eyes could take my breath away. Crap, they just did, I gawked. Just opened my mouth and let it all out. How stupid can you be?

The same beautiful face as before smiles at me with a silent laughter and pulls her finger up to her mouth to silence me, though I'm not talking. I snap my mouth closed and in the next instant, her hands are gripping through my locks and pulling me close. Her lips meet mine with great force and both mouths open. The air that surges forth tastes distinctive and somehow perfect yes with a taste that is like a buzz or a whine to the ears. Her lips are soft and it's everything a kiss should be and more.

She pulls back and smiles softly at me, then licks her lips slightly. Then she it gone, swimming away into the infinite blueness with snaps of her strong fish tail.

I just kissed a mermaid! A mermaid that had lungs full of air?

I don't get to ponder this for more than a second as a strong hand grabs me by the collar and hauls me through the surface of the water. A surface that wasn't there a moment before.

I'm sat firmly onto a solid surface and slapped firmly around the face.

"You need to get used to the fact that this isn't actually water!" a frantic man screams at me. For some reason, I find this horrendously funny, bursting into a fit of laughing and coughing.

"What just happened?" I ask after I finally calm down enough.

"You thought about the fact that you were walking on water so you fell though the surface. Then you felt like it was a long way to the surface so it was. If I hadn't found you from you breathing out, you would have drowned. Drowned in your own acceptance of the situation, more pathetically to the point."

"What?"

"Your dreaming body would have got the message that you're trying to wake because you died in the dream, you wouldn't be able to go back and your body would go into shock. You'd die."

"Oh," I reply. Maybe this place is a bit like the matrix after all…

* * *

"Who was the girl?" I ask finally, after having sat for a long while, soaking wet. Oddly, I haven't fallen back through the surface again, despite sitting on it. 

"Saw her again?" he asks, smiling and looking up from the fire he's building. Building a fire on the surface of a glass smooth lake. Surreal. "She's a nymph. Probably. A nymph is a creature that feeds on people's desires by granting them. They're what you see when you have those dreams where the person you most desire comes flying through the window. I'm guessing that the creature looks almost exactly like someone you know, but just different enough for you to want to explore and know more."

"Yeah…"

"Don't get too hung up on her, Wade, she's trouble. I lost a lot of time chasing the damn things over the years. Ron has a Kim one that he comes to visit sometimes. Doesn't like the others, though, for some reason."

"So these things are hostile?"

"No, just distracting and something of a nuisance, especially considering you're on a time limit here. How long did you say that bio-support harness was going to last?"

"Forty nine hours."

"We better get moving."

* * *

Author's Note: Finally come back to this. You can tell that i'm under pressure to do other things at the moment because i'm writing to avoid them. While i think it's obvious, Shiney penny for the first person who correctly guesses that either the pool or the woman is all about. 


End file.
